Fans embrace wheelchair curling

A general view of the competition during the Wheelchair Curling Round Robin games on day three of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympic Games at Vancouver Olympic Centre on March 14, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada.

Photograph by: Kevin C. Cox
, Getty Images

VANCOUVER — Funny pants worn by the Norwegian team and a Korean skip who believes that if he yells at the rocks, they will listen. Such is the quirky world of wheelchair curling.

No wonder the sport, both the able-bodied and wheelchair varieties, has taken off in popularity at these Olympic and Paralympic Games.

You could have sworn the game associated with drafty prairie rinks, boozy bonspiels and bulky fashion had acquired rock show status at Monday’s games, where schoolchildren and grown-up fans crowded into the rafters to wave flags and banners, ring cowbells and shout for their favourite teams.

The fun began with chanting and feet stamping as the teams were escorted in by a pipe band and the RCMP. The stands erupted when the Canadian team was introduced.

“Ca-na-da! Ca-na-da!”

The wheelchair variety has all the excitement of the regular game, minus the sweeping. These are men and women without brooms, which makes the game look a little bit like shuffleboard on ice. And it’s minus all the yelling directed at sweepers. No need for that here. Once the rock leaves the stick of the wheelchair athlete, that’s it. There is no altering its course unless you think like Haksung Kim, skip of the Korean team.

The animated Kim has this curious habit of communicating with the rocks. He talks and motions to them as if they can hear him. He believes they do.

Kim’s face broke into a sunny smile when he was asked about this. Explaining through an interpreter, he said, “If the stone goes the wrong way, I will call it and it will go the right way.”

For the same reason, he sometimes flings his arm in the air, motioning to the stone.

“He wants to control it,” the interpreter explained, suppressing a shy smile.

Perhaps there is some method to his magic. Korea beat Great Britain 7-4.

The fiercely competitive Kim added he just wants to win a medal. He will do whatever it takes, even if the methods might seem a little mad.

The 45-year-old athlete, who landed in a wheelchair following a car accident in his mid-20s, is envious of wheelchair curlers in Canada who have cheering crowds and beautiful facilities. Curling in general isn’t nearly as popular in Korea, he said.

Maybe that would change if they took some tips from the Norwegians, who lived up to their Olympic reputation as flashy dressers by showing up in baby blue and white plaid pants that resembled pyjamas.

“These are the leftovers,” cracked Norwegian skip Rune Lorentsen.

The team was supposed to wear the blinding harlequin pants of the able-bodied Norwegian curling team, but the demand for them from around the world was so brisk, they sold out after a week.

A new batch is in the works but they won’t be ready until July, said Lorentsen.

The Norwegian curlers’ style of dress is getting a lot of attention back home, with the flashy pants their equivalent of Olympic red mittens in Canada. There is even talk of presenting a pair to Princess Martha Louise of Norway when she makes an appearance.

But not everyone in Norway has embraced the pants, with many calling them clown pants, the skip said. Not even all the players were wild about wearing them. Looking down at his blue-and-white apparel, rubbing the soft cloth between his fingers, Lorentsen didn’t seem to be too sure how he felt about the pants. But he was good-natured about the questions.

The enthusiastic crowd seemed to appreciate everything about the game, pants and all. There was no shortage of panache. The U.S. wheelchairs sported the stars and stripes of their country’s flag in the spokes of their wheels. The Italians had their flag draped over the back of their wheelchairs. If only their playing matched their bravado. They fell 8-2 to the U.S.

There are so many reasons to love this game.

It didn’t hurt that Team Canada, led by popular skip Jim Armstrong, easily outshone Japan in a 13-2 win.

It didn’t hurt, either, that some of the players — like American Patrick McDonald — have embraced the bad boy look. McDonald wore cool sunglasses, gold earrings and purple nail polish.

Brandishing the stick that these curlers use to send the rock sailing down the ice, he joked with reporters, “These are the brains of the operation. Some people say I don’t have too much of that.”

Spotlights

A general view of the competition during the Wheelchair Curling Round Robin games on day three of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympic Games at Vancouver Olympic Centre on March 14, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada.